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Zileas' List of Game Design Anti-Patterns

Absolutely correct. You can however minimize it, or pick method A over method B, where method A has the same gameplay, but is easier to understand

Burden of Knowledge has actually been handled really well in this. At low levels, you mostly only face around 10 champions until the week resets. During that time, you get a feel for what each champion can do. As you work your way up the levels, you encounter people who went "ooh, I like corki!" and you fight against him, but by this point, you've already been playing against the other 4 people on the opposing team, so you get a chance to go "oooh, his rockets HURT" The overall way that the game has worked out was very efficient in me learning how to play. Kudos for that.

Or We Could **** the Player!!1111oneoneone
This is where you straight up screw over the player, usually with dramatic flair, or maybe just try to make the player feel crappy in a way that isn't contributing to the fun of the game. These range in severity, but examples usually are spawned because the designer is a pretentious wanker who likes to show what a smart dude he is and how stupid the player is. I do not respect designers who engage in this pattern intentionally, and encourage any design lead out there to immediately fire any of your staff that does. I do understand that it can happen inadvertently, and that you might cause some of this stress on purpose in an RPG for character development.. And of course, I love you WoW team despite the 'playing vs' experience of Rogue and Warlock, as you DO have the best classes of any MMO, and they look even better in Cataclysm.... But, on Bayonetta, did the developers really think the stone award was a good idea? But I digress...

Situationally Moderate:Horrify + fear kiting from a competent warlock who outgears you in WoW. Guess what? You die before getting to react, while watching it in slow motion!

Sounds like Leblanc to me. Teleport in, nuke you for over half your health then teleport out without being able to react.
I think you need to read your own guidelines tbh.

I would argue that something like Dark Binding has a lot of nuance and depth, and has almost 0 burden of knowledge.

Dark Binding has a lot of nuance and depth, yes, but this game isn't about running around and shooting bindings. Take Morgana, for example. When you see Morgana in the enemy lineup, you need to think about the following things:

A: How to de-initiate Morgana's ultimate.
B: How can we break through shield fast to focus carry down.

But both of these already have burden of knowledge on you. You need to know about Morgana's shield, and the interaction that it has with the enemy carry. You need to know how Morgana's ultimate works, and you need to know which champions have de-initiate mechanics.

How to counter Morgana's ultimate would be obvious if the game just gave you Trist's ultimate, told you how Morgana's ult works and asked you what do you do. It, however, doesn't. It gives you a crapton of options, out of which only some are correct, and it is up to you to know which one of them is the correct one.

MOBA's, as a genre, automatically put burden of knowledge on you.

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Even if this game was about running around and shooting bindings, if there were differences in what kind of bindings each champion can shoot, there would be burden of knowledge on the players to know exactly what their opponents picked. Did they go for the long-range-low-damage ones? Short-range-short-cooldown ones? You get the picture.

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Now that you are around, I would like you to address my counterarguments to two of your points.

Quote:

Amadi:

=== False Choice ===
Yeah. Look, giving people stupid options is great. Allowing Trist to build AP instead of AD and jump to enemy team is great, because it breeds variety. Not only that, but it breeds absolutely hilarious and amusing situations. Yeah, everyone knows that AP Corki is not the best pick, but good grief is it awesome to get your face stomped in by one. Another fact is that a false choice can evolve to be really relevant over time - think AD Eve. AD Eve was very long a build regarded as piece of garbage, but right now, it is probably the better option for Eve.
False choice in character building also promotes synergy. Yeah, you might not want to get AP on Garen anyway, even if your abilities had some really low scalings. It just might happen, however, that your ally might want to get that Will of the Ancients.
I honestly think it would be better for this game if you gave Mundo's abilities low AP ratios and allowed people to do stupid things. Like playing Tank Ryze. Because Tank Ryze is AWESOME. Maybe not very good, but awesome.

So, in my opinion, having an extra option, despite how bad it is, is always better than not having that option at all.

Quote:

Amadi:

=== Fun Fails to Exceed Anti-Fun ===Yeahbuhwha..
Seriously. People considered manaburn unfun? Because I honestly never thought of it that way. I just treated it like any other ability: It was what Nerubian Assassin did. He came out of somewhere and manaburned you. End of story. Getting your mana burned, to me, is nowhere worse than getting silenced, stunned, exhausted, etc. It was a form of CC that lasted longer but was easier to counter, by simply getting more mana.
Infact, I just call bogus on this whole point. Seriously, I can't come up with a single ability that would, as long as I knew what it did, be very unfun to play against by concept. It's a whole different thing if something is totally overpowered, but that's another story.
In all honesty, as long as there is a counter to a given ability/strategy, and using that counter is super effective, the original ability is fine. It only gets unfun when there are no counters available. This is kind of what the AoE comp does, you don't counter it because you can't (Unless you're TF), and therefore it's unfun to play against. It is, however, not unfun to play against by definition.

This one, honestly. Can you give me an example of an ability that would be inherently anti-fun? I cannot think of one off the top of my head.

Burden of Knowledge has actually been handled really well in this. At low levels, you mostly only face around 10 champions until the week resets. During that time, you get a feel for what each champion can do. As you work your way up the levels, you encounter people who went "ooh, I like corki!" and you fight against him, but by this point, you've already been playing against the other 4 people on the opposing team, so you get a chance to go "oooh, his rockets HURT" The overall way that the game has worked out was very efficient in me learning how to play. Kudos for that.

thanks, and yes, that is our intention with the free to play rotations and death recap and so forth.

Sounds like Leblanc to me. Teleport in, nuke you for over half your health then teleport out without being able to react.
I think you need to read your own guidelines tbh.

That can't touch morgana.
"Oh, morgana missed both her root and pool now is my chance!"
Then the morgana player pushes R and when the stun drops, root and pool are off cooldown for an unmissable second chance at the across the river gib.

Morgana has every design flaw imaginable.
The frustration of your abilities no having their effects.
Not being able to outdamage her passive lifesteal when she pushes buttons in a team fight.
Dark binding being undodgable at full range vs. some champions with large models (all melee, too, who are already even more extremely crushed by roots).
Natural MR reduction in case anyone gets any funny ideas about trying to use the offensive MR items, which are completely negated.

That can't touch morgana.
"Oh, morgana missed both her root and pool now is my chance!"
Then the morgana player pushes R and when the stun drops, root and pool are off cooldown for an unmissable second chance at the across the river gib.

Morgana has every design flaw imaginable. 1. The frustration of your abilities no having their effects.Not being able to outdamage 2. her passive lifesteal when she pushes buttons in a team fight.3. Dark binding being undodgable at full range vs. some champions with large models (all melee, too, who are already even more extremely crushed by roots).4. Natural MR reduction in case anyone gets any funny ideas about trying to use the offensive MR items, which are completely negated.

I feel Morgana is pretty balanced in terms of design.

1. The joy of shielding a teammate with Morgana's help? Fun. By the way, Black Shield is probably one of Morgana's only defensive ability and Black Shield only absorbs a certain amount of magic damage, I think it was 300 on level 5 of it.

2. Eh... that is mostly gonna be ignored as Morgana won't do much damage in usual teamfights in my experience. Morgana isn't a carry like Ashe nor can she burst down like Annie.

3. Yea.... Dark Binding's speed is only about 1000 or so... you can dodge it unless your really close. You just have to see the binding and react to move a position that you won't get hit by the binding.

4. Move out of Tormented Soil, just like how you dodge Nasus's Big Purple glowing circle of death.

thanks, and yes, that is our intention with the free to play rotations and death recap and so forth.

About the death recap; would it be possible to add a simple percentage breakdown of the total damage you've taken?

Occasionally you take damage from more than 9 sources and you don't get a full picture of how you died. Seeing that 42% of the damage you took was magical and 58% was physical would be a very useful summary and would go a long way to making the death recap more readable.

1. The joy of shielding a teammate with Morgana's help? Fun. By the way, Black Shield is probably one of Morgana's only defensive ability and Black Shield only absorbs a certain amount of magic damage, I think it was 300 on level 5 of it.

2. Eh... that is mostly gonna be ignored as Morgana won't do much damage in usual teamfights in my experience. Morgana isn't a carry like Ashe nor can she burst down like Annie.

3. Yea.... Dark Binding's speed is only about 1000 or so... you can dodge it unless your really close. You just have to see the binding and react to move a position that you won't get hit by the binding.

4. Move out of Tormented Soil, just like how you dodge Nasus's Big Purple glowing circle of death.

Actually, Morgana does much more damage in a team fight that Annie.
On top of Morgana's base damage being higher (and having an extra disable, bigger AoE radii, and MR reduction), she also gains a total of 3.8 damage per AP. Annie gets 1.9 damage per AP.
This is ridiculously overpowered, hilarious, and undefendable by any stretch.

About the death recap; would it be possible to add a simple percentage breakdown of the total damage you've taken?

Occasionally you take damage from more than 9 sources and you don't get a full picture of how you died. Seeing that 42% of the damage you took was magical and 58% was physical would be a very useful summary and would go a long way to making the death recap more readable.

Good idea. we want to overhaul this a bit anyway at some point in the next few months.